All three of these poets claim, explicitly or implicitly, to be “western,” and it is unlikely that anyone will challenge the claim. Their poems reflect the western landscape, or, more specifically, the Great Basin landscape…
Man grows old at any time, not simply in the Autumn.
In the tropics, we do not recognize seasons:
death is hardly a growth, but accident, catastrophe,
sudden disease, or mere insufficiency;
Patient nuns
cowel-toweled
await annointing.
When
night set and in spite
of the wind
we made camp on a low knoll
Zenith
at noon. Back
stairs wearing away
nails driven through the frame
In October old Michael died,
out of grace and three weeks gone before
we found him, stark white
in that black oak bed of his.
An old Indian lives in the lemon orchard.
His age bewilders the thorns,
his body is rich as brasswork.
He will kill you many times before
Bojangles so much burdens me
With his memory
That I am often caught, mid syllable,
As he stitches back the grey fields of my brain—
Being religious can mean many different things—like going to church, reading scripture, believing in God, keeping the commandments. In fact religion embraces so much that one needs to cast his own religious beliefs and feelings…
On 2 July 1842 the Nauvoo Wasp contained a letter from A. Crane, M.S., professor of phrenology, alluding to the “large number of persons in different places” who wished to know “the phrenological development of…